


The Space Between Words

by tothineownelfbetrue



Category: Disenchantment (TV 2018)
Genre: (potentially) one-sided Bean/Elfo, Bean also hates feelings, Canon Compliant, Elfo is confused, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Growing Up is Hard, Hugs, I love these messed up kids, Implied Luci/Elfo, Luci hates feelings, Luci is basically a cat, Luci is testy, M/M, Mention of underage drinking, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Past Tense, They're just three messed up kids who need each other, They're trying to figure out how to be responsible adults, Things are complicated between them okay, Unrequited Crush, actually talking about feelings because that's important, because they all need lots of hugs, emotional honesty, lame excuses to avoid talking about feelings, lots of hugs okay, maybe? - Freeform, mention of drug use, past Elfo/Kissy, per canon, possibly Bean/Elfo/Luci, pre-any relationships, talking about feelings, third person, this work is not beta read, unrequited feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-08 00:34:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17376155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tothineownelfbetrue/pseuds/tothineownelfbetrue
Summary: Their drugged up kiss haunts Elfo, not necessarily in a good way.  Figuring out what to do about it is hard, especially when he's still struggling with sorting out all of his own feelings, much less making sense of the enigma that is Princess Bean.  Why can't growing up just be easier to do?Or: That weird fic where Bean and Elfo actually talk about that kiss.





	The Space Between Words

**Author's Note:**

> This is a slightly alternate version of the events between Episode 7 and Episode 8.
> 
> I love these characters and I honestly think they're actually weathering some of the issues of growing up better than most actual older folks, so I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt and letting them talk things out.
> 
> There is implied Bean/Elfo (per canon) and some vaguely implied Luci/Elfo. Also some potential for Bean/Elfo/Luci if you squint.

  
-

He still didn't full understand what had happened. If it had actually happened at all. The Bliss had done a number on him... he felt like he'd been picked up and shaken wildly until he couldn't even tell which end of him was up anymore.

Somewhere along the way he stumbled and fell. Bean picked him up easily - so easily - in her strong arms. He was slung across her shoulder, insensate by this point, or very nearly so. If he'd been merely drunk, the bouncing would have made him nauseated, but instead it was almost comforting in its rhythm.

Elfo wasn't sure when they'd reached the castle. There were already big blank gaps in his memory, and he could vaguely register Luci being there. His voice rang out "Goddamn, you two are fucked up..." and then Elfo fell down a long, long distance and hit something soft and white beneath him that swallowed him up.

The rest of the world vanished in a haze.

-

Elfo wasn't entirely sure where he was when he woke up. It felt like his head should be pounding, like the gap in his memory could be explainable by an overabundance of booze. But no... there was just a confusing sort of emptiness, some flashes of things he wasn't sure were real, and a gnawing hunger in his belly.

As he pushed himself upright he realized he was on a pillow on the floor beside Bean's bed. It didn't really answer a lot of his questions. Standing, he could see Bean on the bed, sprawled and snoring faintly. Luci was curled up on her pillow but he stirred as Elfo's gaze fell across him, his eyes open and dark with a smug knowledge that made Elfo a little afraid for some reason.

"Sleep well?" The demon asked, stretching long and catlike. Every limb, then every toe. Lithe as a shadow.

"Um." Elfo had a feeling this was some kind of trap, but he wasn't sure what kind. "I guess so."

"Hmm." And even that small, noncommittal voice had a hit of mockery to it. "You sure seemed comfy last night."

"Last night." Elfo repeated, not sure he wanted to know. But at the same time... well... he really wanted to know. Luci chuckled in his demon way, a sound that vibrated across Elfo's frayed nerve endings. Instead of replying and catching Elfo up on the source of his mirth, he hopped down from the bed to land on the pillow beside the elf. Then one more leap to land on the floor. Despite the thump, Bean didn't awaken, still sleeping off the drugs in her system.

Luci pattered toward the doorway, leaving Elfo frustrated and confused in his wake. It was only when the demon glanced back at him in that knowing way, that Elfo was finally compelled to follow him.

Out in the hallway, Luci didn't seem inclined to go further, just swaying his tail smugly as Elfo joined him. "Look at you, Romeo." Luci gave a soft laugh. "You and Bean had some fun last night, huh?"

Last night? Yes... he did seem to recall something before the drug had really kicked in -

_Let me do it next time_

He wasn't sure though. Surely it had all be some weird Bliss-induced hallucination? He stared at Luci in dismay, not sure whether to be happy at the demon's insinuations or further worried. "What do you mean?" He asked, because somehow stupid questions were his whole thing right now.

"I saw you guys making out. Good job, buddy! Took the initiative after all. I'm proud of you."

Except no, he hadn't. Not at all. Somehow it felt like Luci should have known that too. He hadn't taken the initiative at all. That was all Bean.

Yes. He remembered now.

And a very, very high Bean at that. He still had no idea. No idea what to think about it. Was it pity? Bean was always pretty nice to him, even despite some of her behaviour toward other people. She obviously cared about him as a friend -

_Or maybe more like a pet?_

\- So maybe it had just been to spare his feelings after the humiliation with Tess and the dance. It was so confusing. He still wasn't sure that it had been real, except that Luci was here and smug. "Oh... I..."

He wasn't even sure he wanted it to be true. On the one hand, he definitely had A Thing for Bean. What Kissy would have teasingly referred to as a crush, their first time holding hands, when he'd stumbled over his words before she'd showed him that he didn't need them.

A crush was such a fitting way of putting it. It was a lot like being crushed under something heavy. Slowly. Continuously.

It was nothing like being with Kissy though. That had been so easy. So simple and uncomplicated.

But he hadn't been friends with Kissy either. He'd been a lot of things with her. A lot of fun things, even. But friends... not exactly.

He hadn't honestly known what a friend was until Bean and Luci. Elves had coworkers. They had fellows. They often had sexual partners... but friends?

And it seemed like this Crushing thing and the Friend thing were somehow all muddled up with each other. Because he loved being friends with Bean. It made him feel so much bigger than even his dinky size would allow. And that other thing, that Crushing thing. It made him feel so small.

"I don't think that's..." Elfo stuttered across his words, not sure how to put them, not sure what belonged there. Luci looked at him, eyes narrowed and Elfo had the choice of swallowing the words or spitting them out. He almost cringed as they left his mouth. "I don't think it's like that."

Luci stared at him in blank assessment, then blinked slowly. He straightened up his small black form with a shrug of his shoulders. "Yeah. I guess not. Bean did seem pretty out of it." He smirked a bit, both with his mouth and somehow with his tail. "I take it back. You're still a disappointment."

"Luci..." Elfo wasn't even sure why that stung when it was the truth.

"A profound disappointment." Luci added, giving Elfo a companionable slap of his tail. "But don't you worry, you really can't get any lower in my lack of respect for you. Well... maybe a little bit." He paused. "Yeah, okay. You got even lower."

Elfo wrung his hands slightly, whining in his throat as Luci let him squirm a second longer before excusing himself to do.. whatever demonic things he got up to while mortals were still asleep. Elfo stood in the hallway for a few more minutes, torn over whether to follow or to go back in the room to lay down on the pillows and try to sleep again.

Then the rumbling twinge in his belly reminded him that there was a third option and he instead made his way through the twisting halls and staircases to the familiar cage and the cookies always left inside as a lure. For a moment, he didn't even mind that Sorcerio had the wherewithal to slam the cage door shut once he was inside.

He sat in the dim pre-dawn light and gnawed at his slightly stale cookie. It dispelled the ache in his belly, but not the one in his brain.

What had it meant... the kiss? Something?

Nothing?

-

Bean was there to rescue him from his captivity once she woke up sometime in the early afternoon. The wait had been unbearable. The questions even more so. All he'd been able to puzzle out was that the kiss either meant something or it meant nothing. There was kind of a lot of room between those two possibilities.

The only thing he knew for sure was that he had no idea which it was. Luci would have said Nothing but Elfo also knew the demon enjoyed making fun of his foibles. Yet despite his own - admittedly forced - optimistic upbringing, Elfo wasn't really sure if Luci, or at least the version of Luci currently advising him from his imagination, was wrong.

The only person who could answer that was Bean. If she even remembered anything from the previous evening, of course.

"Let's get breakfast." She said without preamble as she reached into the open cage and lifted him out. The question he wanted to ask died somewhere between the cage and the ground and he plodded after her in preoccupied silence. If she did remember, she wasn't acting like it, which meant it had probably been Nothing after all.

Well, he could live with Nothing, especially given the alternatives. And he wasn't too unfamiliar with this... kind of. As he trotted out onto the terrace where the king and queen were still lounging about after what seemed like a substantial brunch, his mind was still far away.

He was remembering that fleeting high, back in Elfwood. The first flush of excitement after holding hands with Kissy. After doing more. He remembered thinking he would never come down, and yet he had. Being with Kissy had always been fun. It had always been enlightening. Yet, no matter how many times he'd gone to her arms after that first fleeting week, it had never been enough to stave off the bitterness of his own sad Happy little life.

Of course, that hadn't stopped him from enjoying the slight high, the distraction that sex provided almost as well as alcohol. He'd never had a name for the ennui and the tiredness that merely existing and smiling could bring. He'd never had a cure for it.

It was funny. It occurred to him as he struggled to hop up into the nearest chair, only to have Bean help him up almost off-handedly, like what she was doing was nothing special. It was funny how such a little thing, even a silly thing, could make him feel so much better. Even Luci's torments were generally soothing somehow.

Hope. That was the word.

He looked sidelong at Bean and she met his gaze before quickly looking away. It was puzzling and even a bit concerning. He didn't know what she was thinking. The awkwardness was something new and it grated on his nerve endings painfully. He didn't have to think too hard on why it was there. He knew why.

She remembered too.

Suddenly the idea of saying nothing was difficult. Because if she remembered, it meant things were different. He didn't want them to be different. He could happily have lived in blissful ignorance of the very existence of that kiss and all the questions it brought with it. Now it was real and a thing and it felt like a big, uneasy Something between them. What kind of a something, he didn't know. He hadn't thought he'd ever be wishing that Bean kissing him meant nothing.

He ate his biscuit in unaccustomed silence as Bean had her own meal. Normally she was more vocal and gregarious at breakfast, unless she was suffering from a hangover. The silence was deafening. Luci's arrival a few minutes later was a welcome respite, even if he did just immediately hop up onto the table and whap Elfo's face into a bowl of milk. Bean even snickered in response to his sputtering indignation, which was a good sign.

When Bean got up from the table for a moment, presumably to harass her brother who had just passed near them with an armful of stuffed animals in tow, Luci turned to look at Elfo with a long stare. Elfo ducked his head and drank the rest of the milk sloppily from the bowl, trying to forestall the inevitable.

"So. What the hell are you doing, man?"

"Having breakfast." Elfo mumbled into his bowl.

"It's lunchtime." Luci snapped, then shook his head as he probably realized how stupid that sounded. "I mean with Bean! The two of you are being so mopey and awkward and it's not even in an entertaining way! Can't you just stop being dumbasses?" He gave his tail an impatient lash and picked up one of the abandoned glasses on the table, taking a gulp before spitting it out immediately. "That's not even booze. Fuck!"

"We're not doing anything." Elfo said.

Luci stared at him. "Yeah. That's kind of the point, stupid." At Elfo's blank expression, he took another sip from the cup and grimaced. "Look, you guys totally macked on each other because you were super stoned, right?" He continued at Elfo's nod. "And now you're all like 'I'm Elfo and I have all these sad feelings!'" the demon moved his hand in a talking motion while mimicking Elfo's voice. "But you never do anything about them!"

"What am I supposed to do?" He asked, voice coming out in a high whine. "I asked Bean already and she wasn't interested. And she's my friend. She's the only friend I've got..."

"Gee thanks." Luci threw in, his tone unexpectedly biting.

"Besides you, I mean." Elfo fumbled over his words. "I mean..." He let out a breath, long and slow. "I never had anyone back in Elfwood. Not really.” He wasn't even sure where to classify his thing with Kissy. He was pretty sure he'd loved her but considering how little the elves valued everything but blind obedience and forced happiness, he honestly wasn't sure if it had been love or just relief at getting to be himself with someone who wasn't ready to punish him for it. He would have done anything for her though. He knew that much.

Anything but staying.

And he'd do anything for Bean. Wanting to hold her hand had nothing to do with it. Confusingly he felt similarly for Luci, even though the demon consistently mocked him and got under his skin like no one he'd ever met in his life. But that was just proof that they were friends, he supposed.

"I thought she wanted to be friends." He said at last, lamely. "I was good with that. I was happy with that." He gave a small helpless laugh, remembering the shock of her words in the plague pit.

_I wanted to experience Bliss together._

The drug. Not the emotion.

So stupid. He'd almost gotten to the point where he was fine with where things were. They had an ease to their friendship that just flowed and he enjoyed it more than he'd ever enjoyed anything back in the relative safety of Elfwood. Even Luci's teasing had been more soothing than frustrating, most of the time. He'd been... happy. Actually happy. Even when things sucked, he'd known that as long as he had his friends the happy moments would come again. The sucky stuff made those other moments even better.

So of course he'd made a mistake and one he wasn't sure was even worth it. Bean kissing him after his abject humiliation in front of the world - and more importantly, his friends - had been a brief high. He was regretting it now because it was so much less important than the things that had existed before it.

The comfort. The ease. Just getting to be himself.

He missed it.

The teasing and the humiliation of admitting he was wrong, that he'd been insecure... that was nothing to the feeling of unease that sat in the pit of his gut at Bean avoiding him. And to top it all off, he still had no idea if she'd kissed him because of some kind of pity or just because she'd been so high that she hadn't realized he was Elfo or...

Or some other reason that he didn't know if he wanted to even entertain because it was either ridiculous or terrifying and he wasn't sure which could be worse.

There was so much going through his head that he couldn't begin to piece it together into some semblance of coherent words. Luci was still staring at him and he stuttered through the only thing he could actually manage. "I want to be friends." It came out small and agonized, like himself. "I need my friends."

He expected Luci to laugh at him, right in his face. On some level, the familiarity of such mockery might have been a comfort. But instead Luci was giving him such a strange look, just a long stare, a slight crinkle at the corners of his eyes. His pointy black ears sat at an odd angle instead of being straight up and confident. Elfo had no clue what was going on in his nefarious brain and he wasn't sure he wanted to know. When Luci spoke, finally, his tone was softer than usual but also somehow cool. "Then tell her that."

Elfo's mind balked. There were too many things that could go wrong. Talking could tear down what fragile connections still remained. But it could also possibly get rid of this terrible feeling of being alone, wondering what he could have done or said to stop it from happening. "I can't... I mean I don't know..."

"Do it." Luci said, not teasing. The playfulness was gone and that was also somehow terrifying. "Do it." His gaze was intense and Elfo didn't understand what he was seeing or why Luci would even care. He was suddenly aware of how truly alien Luci was to him and he swallowed hard, pinned in place by that gaze.

"Okay." He said at last, because there was nothing else to say.

Luci moved across the table to pick up a roll from the nearly empty basket, flicking his tongue across it in a taste before beginning to eat it, ignoring Elfo's obvious distress.

When Bean came back to the table she was ruffled, feathers sticking out of her mess of white hair. She was smug too though, with a swagger to her steps that was both magnificent and enviable. Oh, to be so confident.

"Well guys, I did it." Bean drawled with a grin. Once both of them had their attention on her, she held up her hands with a dangling stuffed animal head from each. Elfo still had no idea what she hoped to accomplish by tormenting her younger half-brother. The kid was neither terribly smart nor terribly interesting and Bean was rarely so vindictive. It had something to do with her stepmother, he was sure, but couldn't spare it much concern now.

"Bean," he said, then winced at the croak that was his voice. Her gaze went to him, momentarily guileless. "C-can we-" Elfo felt Luci's eyes on him and he choked out the next word. "-talk?"

Her pause was all the answer he needed when it came to her feelings on the matter of 'talking' and he almost regretted even bringing it up at all. She was tense again, her joviality over taking out her frustration on her brother was gone. "We should go into town," She said, ignoring the question entirely. "I want to pick up some radishes..." Elfo was almost grateful for this lame excuse to end the conversation, then Luci piped in again and Elfo had the sudden urge to throw his half eaten pastry at him.

"C'mon losers. Just man up and talk already."

Bean seemed just as baffled by Luci's meddling as Elfo was and for a moment the two of them shared a look of confusion and resultant solidarity that almost felt like things were back to normal. "Why do you care?" Bean asked the demon. "Are you supposed to be.... I don't know... getting me to make bad life choices?"

"Maybe this is a bad life choice," Luci said with a shrug, somehow pulling a joint out of midair. "Or maybe I just like watching Elfo cry. Either way, I think you're gonna talk. I put the idea in your head." He lit the tip of the joint with his tail and Elfo was once more struck with bafflement on what exactly Luci had to gain from any of this.

Maybe he did just expect it to lead to tears. Or maybe - and Elfo felt himself hoping this fervently - maybe despite his bluster and the sheer amount of evil packed into his diminutive frame, Luci was just a softie at heart and really cared about the feelings of his friends? Maybe?

Either way, the ball was in Bean's court and she didn't seem thrilled. He could understand. Bean wasn't used to talking about stuff. Elfo hadn't been either, at first, but he'd swiftly discovered how liberating it could be to actually talk to someone about his feelings. Even when it had just been Kissy, getting off on his whining.

But this was Bean. And Bean didn't exactly do emotional outbursts that weren't either anger or drug and alcohol induced happiness. So her muttered, "Fine" caught him off guard. She was still agitated though and Elfo was wholly not sure this was a good idea.

"We can talk some other time..." He offered.

"We'll talk now and then you can both get off my back." Bean snapped. She took one look at the open veranda and the place where her father had wandered off to after eating and she grimaced. "Not here."

"Then where-" Elfo didn't get the chance to finish before he was unceremoniously scooped up and tucked under Bean's arm. He was vaguely aware of Luci trailing behind them for some inexplicable reason.

He'd half expected Bean to go back to her room, but instead she went further out from the castle. Vines climbed the stone wall of the building they approached. There was a door, but they didn't actually go inside. Instead, Bean dumped him into a patch of grass beside the stone wall and began to pace. Elfo wrung his hands at this evidence of distress.

"Bean..." His words didn't even seem to register with her and she was pacing more frantically, high strung as a horse. It had been a long time since he'd seen her so agitated. He wanted to reassure her. What he'd told Luci already.

To be friends. That was the most important thing. Everything else had to be secondary.

But when he attempted to talk again, she pulled up short, her back to him. She made a small sound, like a pained laugh. "Look, Elfo." She began and he froze with the words dying on his lips. "I didn't want to actually talk about... you know..."

Yes. He did know. The kiss. He was afraid to talk about it himself. This was another terrible idea, courtesy of a demon. "We don't-" _We don't have to. I don't want to._ He just wanted things to be normal, or as normal as anything ever was for the three of them.

Bean turned her head, not quite looking at him. The way she was standing cast her into sharp relief against the cloudy horizon. "Yeah. You wanna know why, don't you?" Her voice was low and even with his sensitive elf hearing, he barely heard her. "I can't tell you that," she said finally. "I can't."

She turned the rest of the way, looked at him directly and held his gaze. Her eyes were as blue as ever, stormy blue. "You were high, Bean." He said, a bit more steadily. Sympathetic. He was giving her an out. After all, he knew that feeling of confusion. He'd been living it all day.

"Yeah." She breathed, then surprised him with more. "It wasn't that." They were words he couldn't wrap his head around. At least being high made some sense. More sense than an apparently inexplicable decision to kiss a dinky elf for some other reason.

"Then..." He spoke, uncertain, not even sure what question he wanted to ask.

" **I don't know!** " She almost yelled it, for a moment showing a flash of the usual fire and vigor she was mostly forced to keep under wraps. They both stared at each other at that outburst. For a moment it was like they were strangers. Like they both didn't know the language. Then she repeated, softer and slower. "I don't know." And then words that tore at Elfo. "Is it okay?" She asked, clutching for some answer or reassurance. "Not knowing?"

The space between them was gone in a heartbeat. Somehow Elfo's feet had dragged him over toward her, or vice versa. Either way, he let out a soft sound that was equal parts anguish and understanding. "Yeah." He said, surprised at the relative steadiness of his own voice. "It's totally okay. I mean... I don't know much of anything either." He admitted, wry and pathetic and Bean made a sound like a snort, or maybe even a choked off laugh.

It was contagious, if a bit hysterical and he laughed too, though it was more relief than mirth. He laughed until the sound stopped being sad and started sounding like something semi-normal. His sides hurt, but likely so did Bean's by the way she started to wheeze.

"We're pathetic, aren't we?" Bean managed to croak out, at last.

Her words brought the whole situation crashing down around them again. The giggles died off and left them sitting in sober silence. There were right words, Elfo thought, a bit desperately. There were. But they weren't words he had... and apparently neither did Bean.

Her anger from earlier was gone and the open agitation that had accompanied it. She seemed smaller without it. "I think I need a drink," she murmured into the awkward silence and Elfo nodded. But there were no drinks.

But god, it was not a conversation that either of them wanted to have sober.

Bean was the first to break the silence again, always the bold one. It was one of the many things he admired about her, along with her caring and the compassion she showed him. Her stature too, he admitted the last wryly to himself because he could only wish to be half as tall or strong as Bean. "I don't know why I kissed you," she said and he believed her even if the words were not all he wanted to hear in his heart of hearts. "I mean it wasn't the drugs, I guess." She paused. "Maybe they helped. I was pretty messed up.

"But I guess... I just couldn't leave it like that." She let out a breath. "And I know. Um. I know that you kinda _like_ me." Her gaze briefly met his and the emotion in her blue eyes was something strong but unfathomable. Pity maybe.

"I'm sorry!" He blurted out, not sure what else to say. "I"m so sorry, Bean!" And he was. He'd screwed it up, hadn't he? Stupid crush. He remembered Bean's rebuke at the party, all too keenly, and it still made him feel so small and grubby inside. If only he didn't _like_ her, it would be so much simpler.

He had tried. He could console himself a little with that knowledge. He'd tried to not feel it. When that had failed, it had been the least he could do to not bring it up. No repeat of that damned part and the behaviour that had alienated the two of them, if only temporarily. The world didn't really need Bad Elfo. Bean certainly didn't.

"I know. I know I shouldn't feel that way." He curled in on himself, mournful. The sad part was, his own feelings were a confusing mishmash now. He couldn't even begin to sort them out.

"No." Bean agreed, too quickly. It was surprisingly flat. "You shouldn't." Her words were jarring in their matter of fact tone, with just a hint of bitterness. Perhaps his expression had changed, because Bean looked at him and then spoke again, softer. "Elfo, you really shouldn't. I don't even like me." She laughed, mirthless. "I'm a hopeless drunk. I don't do anything useful around here." Her breaths came harder and Elfo could almost see all the other things she was thinking, all the words she couldn't say.

He couldn't tell her she was wonderful. That she was clever and resourceful. He couldn't even point out that she'd saved his life more than once. He had the feeling she wouldn't believe it, especially not now that she knew about his stupid crush. "Bean." He remembered all the platitudes, all the things he'd said in praise and he was able to console himself that he'd always believed them wholeheartedly. It hadn't even been because of his feelings - or mostly not, at least. Just the same need to see the good in a violent alcoholic, or a demon, or a peasant's plain meal.

"You're a good person, Bean." He said finally. "I mean, maybe not all the time. But nobody is a good person all the time. "He still remembered his own petty jealousy a few weeks back and it was a source of guilt even now. "But it doesn't matter if we mess up sometimes as long as we learn something from it and we keep trying."

She looked at him dully. "And what did we learn from all this?" She asked.

He had to think, truly he did. What had they learned from all this? He didn't feel any less confused about his own feelings than he had been when they'd started. If anything, he was even more torn when he realized she was just as uncertain over it as he was. It was so much worse than a simple no would have been. At a glance, it seemed like this whole emotional honesty thing was only making things worse and yet....

He looked up at Bean wondering why he felt relief. Then it struck him and he drew a long breath. "We learned that we're not alone." He said and Bean's eyes got wide.

Elfo hoped she understood what he meant because he and Bean didn't always operate on the same page. In a lot of ways she was more in sync with Luci, both in her worldview and her reactions to things, so he couldn't be sure. She stared at him, just a moment more and he yearned to clarify, but he wasn't sure it would help. Then she finally spoke.

It was just a soft "yeah" but that was enough.

She bit her lip, worried at it like she wanted to say more and then asked in a small voice. "What about us?"

"What-" Elfo let out a soft noise of distress, completely unintentionally. "What do you mean?"

"We're still friends, aren't we?" The tone of her voice and her slight hesitance made things start to click together in Elfo's head. Because she sounded as worried about what he'd say as he'd been worried about broaching the subject earlier.

They were friends. Elfo had never had a better friend.

"Of course we are, Bean." He reached out, despite all the earlier fears, moving to hug her before remembering that things were supposed to be awkward now and drawing up just short. Yet Bean had forgotten too, because she cleared the rest of that distance to scoop him up and hold him in a crushing embrace. he tangled his hands in her trailing sleeves and held on for dear life. "We'll always be friends." He murmured at last, when she gave him enough room to breathe.

Bean's eyes were somehow even more blue than usual, like the clear sky after a storm, and she smiled at him, brilliantly. There was an odd roughness to her voice. "I'm gonna hold you to that."

Elfo let out a snort, despite himself, then it devolved into a soft, undignified giggle. A few seconds later, Bean's laughter joined him. She sat down in the grass, heavy and clumsy, and then sprawled onto her back, finally releasing Elfo so he rolled onto the damp ground next to her.

It took a while before they both fell silent, lying on the grassy slope on their backs and staring at the sky far overhead. Silence stretched out, long and uninterrupted.

"Being an adult sucks." Bean said, almost conversationally.

"Yeah." Elfo couldn't argue with that. "It's all so confusing."

"Yeah." Bean rolled onto her side, facing him. "Hey... uh... thanks."

He blinked. "For what?"

Bean shrugged. "For being my friend. I don't really have friends." She chuckled. "Just some drinking buddies who occasionally try to kill me." Her hand reached out, ruffling at his hair. "And I guess I had an idea already that you... y'know... liked me. But I guess I didn't think you'd still want to be friends. If I didn't feel the same way."

Elfo sat up, resolute for once, voice steady. "Bean, no. We're friends and that means more to me than... whatever other confusing thing I'm feeling." He rubbed at the back of his neck. 'And yeah, I didn't have any friends back in Elfwood either." He admitted in solidarity. "Just coworkers.

"Well," Bean gave a lopsided grin, "I guess we can be each other's first then."

"Yeah!" Elfo agreed, sitting up. He was still ruffled from being rolled on the ground, a few blades of grass clung to him. "I'd be honored to be your first friend, Bean."

"Pff. Sweet talker." She gave him a gentle shove and he landed flat on his back again with a laugh. "If you did that more often, you might not need a fake girlfriend who lives far away." She was treading a careful line in bringing it up, but he took it as the mild tease it was meant to be.

He paused, mouth open for a second wondering if he should say the thing and then he just went ahead and did it anyway. "I did actually have a girlfriend. An actual one, I mean. Not Tess..." That was a given considering everything. "Back in Elfwood. But I guess we kind of broke up. When I left and never came back."

"Yeah, I'd say that counts as breaking up." Bean smiled, then ribbed him gently. "So, you had a real itty bitty elf squeeze? I was right." Her gaze became briefly distant and self satisfied, "Luci owes me five silver now."

"Yeah." Elfo didn't feel self conscious talking about Kissy now, not the way he would have if she'd come up in the conversation before this. "She was actually a little taller than me..."

"You really do like big girls," Bean laughed, not unkindly. "You dog. Go Elfo." And just like that, all the leftover awkwardness melted away in the face of this friendly banter.

They **were** friends. Yeah. Good friends -

_best friends?_

\- and that was the important thing. Anything else, they could work out later, if they needed to. He had confidence that they could get through anything, even if they were both terrible at this whole 'being adults' stuff.

Bean gave him a loose, one-armed hug and he leaned into it, thinking this was the best moment he'd had in his short life so far. Hopefully it would only get better from here.

"'sup, losers?" Luci's voice cut through the pleasant haze and they both turned at the same time to look at him as he sauntered over at them, tail held high but swaying slowly behind him. He looked at the two of them, hugging and ruffled and he narrowed his eyes. "Please tell me you two banged or something."

"We talked about our feelings!" Elfo chirped, upbeat. Luci let out a low groan.

"You mortals and all your feelings. Ugh. You're so sappy. All that hugging and crap." Something about the way he said it came across as odd, especially considering how hard he'd pushed Elfo to talk to Bean in the first place.

Sure, maybe he'd really been trying to get them to argue and stop being friends. He was a demon and therefore quite evil by default. But Elfo really wanted to think it was because in his own weird, evil way, Luci actually cared about the two of them.And besides, there was just something about the way Luci was looking at them, tense and distant, but edged in oddly close. It made Elfo wonder.

"Do you want a hug too?" Elfo asked, keenly aware that Luci might refuse, out of being Evil or because of his whole 'I'm too cool for mushy stuff' attitude. He hoped Luci wouldn't refuse though because he was starting to realize that he wanted to give Luci a hug too. That was threatening to be an additional source of confusion, sometime in the future, and he really wasn't sure he had the capacity yet to think about the demon in any regard other than his intense need for hugging all of a sudden -

_If anything Luci was somehow even more unattainable than Bean... and that was a thought he wasn't ready for._

\- so he hoped for a yes and expected a no.

Luci was remarkably unflappable, even under Elfo's scrutiny. Bean was also looking at him, probably just as curious about what he was going to say as Elfo was.

Finally the demon shrugged. "Fine. Whatever. Just make it fast before your stupid mortal cooties rub off on me." No sooner had the words left his mouth than he was pulled into an overly affectionate elf hug. He stiffened for a second, then gradually leaned into it, even as it went on for far too long. "You know this is stupid, right?"

Bean let out a snort of laughter, looking on. "I think you like it. You're more like a cat than you think." Luci let out a hiss against Elfo's ear, even though that seemed to further the comparison. Then a pair of big warm human arms wrapped around the both of them and held them.

"Shut up." Luci snapped, but he didn't squirm away. Then, perhaps realizing he was caught and ought to make the best of it, he added. "Pet my ears."

They both did, with varying degrees of success while they were still wrapped up in this awkward group hug.

When they all finally pulled away, they sat there looking at each other. Luci was the one who broke the silence by clearing his throat. "So. Let's um. Let's blow this joint. There's gotta be something better to do than sitting around in the weeds and hugging and all that crap."

Elfo disagreed with the notion that there was something better that they ought to be doing, but Bean apparently took pity on the demon.

"I did have to go pick up radishes. In town."

"Radishes?" Luci scowled. "Are you serious? I thought that was just a lame excuse to avoid talking about kissing Elfo."

"No, I really want radishes." Bean said easing to her feet at land and holding out her hands to each of them. "But it was also a good excuse. C'mon. Let's go." Luci ignored her outstretched hand and instead climbed up the length of her body to sit on her shoulder. Elfo took her other hand with a small smile.

Fetching radishes didn't sound fun, not even to him. But he was sure that like most of their outings it would turn into some kind of adventure. It would probably be awful.

And as long as they were together, it went without saying that it would all be worth it.

 

-End-

 

 


End file.
